I was sitting in a diner in Washington DC. I discovered that I could flip the right side of my seat up. When I did, I found a dirt-lined hole underneath, and it was filled with bugs.

Most prominent were huge centipedes, about a foot long, coiling and scuttling. I closed the seat in horror and wondered how the diner could get away with such an infestation, but did nothing else about it. The scene felt very much as if it were the continuation of a previous dream from some time in the past, but I couldn’t remember any such dream.

Shortly afterward, a large group of people started filing into the diner, wearing suits and dresses, carrying papers and notebooks, and made their way down into the basement. The last person in was president Obama, and I suddenly knew that the diner’s basement was now the headquarters of his government-in-exile, but knew nothing else about the situation.

Flipping the seat back up, I found some of the centipedes had grown to over two feet, and their eyes were now glowing like multicolored jewels.

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I’ve gotten about halfway through Horizon Storm, book 3 of The Saga of Seven Suns. It’s still pretty good, but my observations from the previous blog post still stand.

After putting the book down and turning off the light, I eventually fell asleep at about 2:30am. During the whopping two hours of sleep I got, I dreamed I was still reading the book, except my brain had amplified Anderson’s tendency to use a lot of short sentences. The whole thing was now written at the about the third grade level:

“Jess saw Cesca. He walked over to Cesca. Cesca wanted to touch him. He told her no. He said it would hurt her. Cesca was sad…”

…and on, and on, and ON, for what seemed like hours. I was actually glad to wake up but, since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I spent the next two and a half hours on the couch reading more of the book.

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Frodo had gone completely Dark Side. Taller than before, hair slicked back, he sneered down from the top step of the foyer at his hosts: two older hobbits who owned the immaculate, well-lit home. He was flanked by two nameless companions, and together the five of them surrounded a deep pit set inexplicably in the entryway floor. A mop of curly hair was just visible at the bottom.

“I was sick of his shit,” Frodo said in a bored voice, “and I pushed him in. So what?”

Some time later, everyone was gathered in a room deeper inside the house. Frodo asked Older Hobbit #1 what had become of the body. OH1 looked slyly at Older Hobbit #2.

“This one cooked him up and ate him!”

Everyone immediately believed this without question, and turned murderous gazes on OH2. Terrified, OH2 waddled into the kitchen as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him, and I followed behind.

He pulled open the oven door, and I caught a horrible glimpse of something large roasting within, before he slammed it shut again. He turned back to OH1, now sitting in a chair near the kitchen entrance.

“You cooked him yourself, and blamed me for it! You’re going to pay for this!”

His back to me, OH2 pulled open the front of his pants and a heavy stream of piss suddenly splashed against OH1’s face, who opened his mouth to catch it.

I watched in stunned disbelief for a second, then yelled at the lot of them, “Stop it! Do you know what the worst thing about the ‘Lord of the Rings’ books was? All the singing! Not this–cannibalism and water sports! What the fuck is wrong with you people?!”

I stormed through the kitchen door and outside. Crouched immediately in front of me was one of the creatures which had been stalking us, and the reason we’d taken shelter here. It resembled a large, four-legged stuffed animal without fur: all smooth white cloth and black button eyes, with no other distinguishing features.

These are the terrible monsters we were running from?

Startled by my sudden appearance, the thing froze. Without breaking stride I snap-kicked it under the jaw, sending it end-over-end across the courtyard, and in my best Ripley vs. the Alien Queen voice screamed, “DON’T FUCK WITH ME! I WILL KILL YOU!”

Turning left into a hallway that appeared, another of the things got in my way. I grabbed it by the hindquarters, spun around in a circle, and hurled it into the third critter just behind it. They both went flying, and my improvised missile turned into a shaggy blue toy dog. I suddenly felt a bit guilty for being mean to something so cuddly and lovable, but put it out of my mind as I stomped down the corridor and into the next dream.

“What kind of fighter squadron doesn’t have service manuals for any of its planes? How are we supposed to fix anything?!”

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I was sitting at my desk at night. I looked at my bottle of Adderall and suddenly took one out and swallowed it. I was shocked at what I’d done and yelled at myself, “What are you doing? You’ll never get to sleep now!”

No sooner had I finished lecturing myself, I took another one. After more ranting, I decided to go make myself throw them back up. That accomplished, I sat back down at the desk to think about why I was doing this. I contemplated the bottle and, seconds after doing so, my hands moved of their own volition to take out another capsule, which I promptly swallowed. It was as if my hands and mouth were operating completely independent of my brain, and merely looking at, or even thinking about, Adderall made them take one.

By the fourth capsule, I realized I was dreaming, but was suddenly unsure whether I had taken any in real life, as dreaming and waking started to blur together. When I woke up, I had to think about it for a few seconds to sort it out, as there were no fantastical elements in the dream to make it obvious.

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We stood in front of the vault with the sheriff, staring at the large canvas sack made square by the stacks of bills within. A larger block of cash, unbagged, formed a pedestal beneath it. The CEO/doctor who had died had left no heirs, and we had made the discovery.

$250,000, and it was ours. Apparently salvage rights apply to wall safes in dreams.

“Sorry, it goes into custody, as evidence.”

“Evidence for what?! He didn’t DO anything; there was no crime!”

The sheriff’s silence indicated the matter was not up for discussion.
—
Some sneaking around and skirting of the law occurs.
—
Grabbing loose bearer bonds and random $100 bills, I stuffed them in my pockets, smugly self-righteous that I would NOT be cheated by a thieving court system’s sense of entitlement.

As I reached the boat dock, an unwelcome thought intruded: “You do realize you’re dreaming, right? How do you expect to get any of this money back into the real world?”

Shit.

Somehow, I concocted a method of transferring small numbers of items from the Dreaming into the Waking, and was all set to make a small fortune from my haul. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

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I was with some type of outcast group, who had done some great service for the majority populace and were now leaving/retiring. I got the sense that we were sort of like death knights, in that we weren’t “alive”, nor were we undead, but sort of in-between.

As part of our departure ceremony there was a light, almost invisible cable strung across a huge lake, like a roller coaster track. Each of us would, in turn, hang our swords by the cross-guard on a bracket suspended from the cable, grab hold of that bracket ourselves and be pulled up and away across the lake. After going up the first “hill”, gravity and momentum carried us on a slow, lazy course winding across the water.

We had to work to keep going: twisting our bodies to make turns or keep up our speed. The little girl who followed behind me fell off her sword into the water because she could no longer hang on.

Her and I were the only people I actually saw at the lake; no one else was visible, but their presence was implied. At the end of it, all of us were visible as we stood together, with our swords, for some kind of final group photo.

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Dreamed I was a hawk, carried over a high mountain ridge by snowy updrafts. Over the ridge and far below me was an alpine valley, with log buildings. Flew down into it like going down a roller coaster. Was chased by red-winged blackbirds, which I couldn’t outmaneuver, so I landed and started shooting them with a BB rifle. Afterwards, I rounded up a bunch of generic small furry rodents, put them in a box, picked it up, and flew away with them somewhere.

This was the first flying dream I’d had in years, and it was fantastic. All of the senses were involved except smell: temperature, wind, sound, sense of altitude, even the stomach drop caused by a steep dive.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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Dreamed I’d gotten married to a pretty, black-haired woman who was blind. I went into a side room of the reception hall to change clothes, but I just kept rearranging the clothes I was already wearing: black dress shirt, black undershirt, tan pants, brown belt. I tucked, untucked, buttoned, unbuttoned, took the belt off, and put it back on. I was trying to hurry but it seemed to take forever. There were pastel chalk marks on my collar around the top button, but I can’t remember why they were there. I do remember thinking, “She’s blind; she won’t notice them.”

When I first went in, I could hear a lot of noise from the hall. Near the end of all this re-dressing my friends in the hall started singing a showtune in unison; Joe Dix’s voice was the only recognizable one. I thought at first it was “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge, but the words were something like, “you changed my life completely” or “you changed everything”.

I finally walked out of the room to find a silent, nearly empty hall. There were four large, round, white tables off to the right side, three of which were empty. At the fourth one sat my sister, my maternal grandmother, and a couple of other unknown relatives. On the table were all kinds of desserts, with a red, white & blue color scheme. One dish I focused on looked like a bowl of white macaroni in white chocolate sauce with sprinkles, and I remember thinking it looked kind of revolting: the macaroni had an unnatural shine to it.

I felt terrible that everyone had left, and wondered why no one had come to check on me or hurry me up. I walked up behind my sister, put my hands on her shoulders, and said, “I am SO sorry it took so long!”

Clearly annoyed, she replied, “I don’t care! It’s YOUR birthday!”

I woke up.

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Anna Torv as a law enforcement character, not clear if it was her Fringe character exactly, as she was never named. In a bar, in eastern Washington state, arguing with a Marine in civvies. Telling him he failed his oath and, instead of protecting, brought harm (drunk driving or something similar). She (Anna) was somehow culpable as well (by not stopping him?). Cut to two young girls in a hospital, badly injured. Angry and bitter towards Anna.

Cut back to her in her home; now broken by guilt and remorse. She opens a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil, puts it in her mouth. She reads something written on the inside of the foil and begins shrieking in mortal terror. I look away from the large TV I’m suddenly watching this on, and a small TV at the other end of the hotel room turns itself on to the same program. Now freaked out myself, from her loud screaming and the self-activating TV, I look back at the large TV and rejoin the scene, about to yell at her that she’s dreaming.

She’s being viciously attacked by a black dog, standing upright like a man, holding her arms with his paws and snapping at her. A near-human primate, a caveman of some kind, is on her back shrieking as it beats her with what looks like a table leg or section of pool cue.

Cut to the outside of her home. She shuffles out the door and onto the porch. She is ancient now, with simian features. The caveman is clinging to her back (monkey on her back?), while the black dog, still upright, walks next to her holding her arm. There is a semi-circle of mothers surrounding her, each with a young child. She begs them, saying, “I just need to speak to the little ones”. Horrified, the mothers grab their children and turn away to leave. As each one leaves the circle they vanish, sucked down into the ground.

The dog and the caveman, both now on four legs, bound in slow motion across the boulder-strewn terrain and out of sight. Anna is not visible, but they still carry her, disembodied, between them, in search of a child to beg forgiveness.

Until I left the house, and even on the drive to work, I was afraid. I kept expecting to turn a corner, in the house or on the road, and see that black dog standing in front of me. What the fuck is going on in my head lately?

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I was in a larger version of our upstairs bathroom, and it had a large triangular sink that pointed into the room. On the lip of the point were attached five small buttons of jade, one in each of the colors of the Elemental Dragons in the Exalted RPG (the greatest gods of the Terrestrial Bureaucracy; above them are the Celestial Bureacracy). I know all five were on the sink, but I only remember seeing the black and red ones.

I was having an argument with Danaa’d, the Elemental Dragon of Water (in a bathroom, how appropriate lol). He was in human form, and wearing black. I can’t remember a single word of the argument, except that I was adamant that I was right about whatever it was, and closed the conversation with a “…and that’s THAT!” tone.

I woke up with the sense that whatever we had argued about was very important but, try as I might, I still can’t recall a single thing about it. Last night I flipped through my Exalted books and wrote down the things associated with Danaa’d and his Chosen, looking for clues as to what my subconscious was getting at:

– quick to adapt to new ideas
– flexibility
– suspicious of dogma
– fond of mysteries and solving puzzles
– problem-solving through unconventional means
– conflict as a growth opportunity
– growth through adversity
– that which is hidden in the black ocean depths

Last night in bed, after writing this in my dream journal, I focused on calling Danaa’d back to find out what we argued about. The thoughts right after that were, “‘Come back’ implies ‘left in the first place'”, and “Danaa’d is always here, down in the bottomless depths.”

I focused on the blackness of my closed eyes and visualized sinking down into it, but as often happens when trying to meditate, I suddenly had one itch after another that had to be scratched, and I couldn’t shut them out. I eventually fell asleep, but I don’t remember any dreams.

The other reason this was interesting was that it showed how everything we put in our heads becomes part of our “library”, or even a personal mythology. I know that Danaa’d (and every other god in the game) was completely made up by a designer, for use in a game of make-believe, but I’ve internalized all of the game lore so thoroughly that my subconscious has turned at least part of it into a means of communicating with me.

8/19/10 Update: In the dream the only colors of jade visible on the bathroom sink were black and red. Tonight, in real life, Aaron’s parents drove down from Port Huron to take us to dinner for our birthdays. He was dressed head-to-toe in black. She was dressed head-to-toe in red.